


Tell Me I'm A Bad Man

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [43]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, John is a bad man, Swearing, trauma aftermath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:19:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people wanted to know what happened at dinner after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/753105">I Know a Thing About Contrition</a>. It was this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me I'm A Bad Man

John and Greg, waiting at the restaurant, noticed Molly’s limp pretty much simultaneously. Greg leaped up to put a solicitous hand under her arm and ask what had happened. John, his professional eye noting that the injury seemed minor, simply raised an eyebrow at Sherlock, coming in behind her.

That Sherlock was behind her was a little odd. Normally he bowled in ahead of everyone, sweeping his way to a table and either flinging himself into a chair with reckless abandon or dropping into it in a tightly controlled landing. Sherlock Holmes never merely _sat_ in a chair. But this time, Sherlock was edgy, keeping a careful distance a few paces behind: demonstrating the kind of watchfulness of someone expecting an ambush.

John remembered feeling like that a lot of the time when he first got back from Afghanistan. The thought made him cast a quick, assessing glance around, but everything appeared normal, and Sherlock wasn’t giving off the usual vibe that signaled a genuine threat.

Sherlock caught John’s circumspect ‘everything all right?’ lift of the brow and nodded curtly as he took a seat. For her part, Molly was laughingly protesting that Greg needn’t fuss.

“I’m fine, Greg, really,” she was asserting, “There was a bit of a run in with an aggressive visitor at the hospital.”

Greg bristled. “Someone was aggressive to you? He hurt you?” Greg looked about ready to become a git-seeking missile.

“It wasn’t anything, really. He pushed me and I bumped into a table.”

“Bit more than a bump, by the look of that limp,” Greg scowled.

Molly patted his arm. “I banged up my hip a bit, but really, it’s fine. Sherlock sorted him out and security took him away.” Seeing there was nothing else for it, Molly gave a commendably succinct account of the whole sorry incident.

Greg tried to simultaneously give Molly a solicitous look, give Sherlock a grateful nod and give the absent bully a glare that would melt steel. Surprisingly, he managed all three expressions rather well.

“Did a doctor see you?” John asked.

Molly wiggled her raised hands in a ‘ta da’ gesture along with a ‘hi, there’ sort of smile, reminding him that she was herself a medical professional. John smiled ruefully at her. “Fine, I’ll stop fussing. As long as you’re sure you’re fine.”

“I’m sure I’m fine,” Molly said solemnly, then gave Greg a mock-stern glare. “I said I’m _fine_.” She leaned forward and murmured something into his ear. John caught a few syllables and decided he would pretend he had not heard a word about things being ‘kissed better’ later. Especially when Greg’s look of concern morphed with relief and wickedness into an anticipatory grin.

“Are you okay?” John asked Sherlock softly, studiously ignoring the couple.

Sherlock’s mouth tensed in irritation.

John leaned towards him. “You know what I mean.”

Sherlock glared at him, then nodded in a tiny movement.

They both knew what John meant, and what Sherlock meant too. They were used to each other’s trigger moods by now. Sherlock’s body language and positioning broadcast the tension of the hunted as well as the predator. Right now, his was the stance of the battlefield.

Molly appeared to be aware of it too. She patted Sherlock’s hand, casting him a warm smile.

“Sherlock took good care of me,” she said in a reassuring tone, which strangely was aimed at Sherlock, and then she smiled. “You should have heard what he called that horrible man.”

“Something in Latin with fifteen syllables?” suggested Greg. Sherlock’s tension wasn’t lost on him either, but he played along, trying to lighten the mood.

Molly giggled. “No.”

“What then?”

Sherlock looked balefully at her, then rolled his eyes, giving implicit permission to continue.

“A fuck-knuckling prick-turkey!” announced Molly, who then folded up giggling.

John’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline. “A _what,_ now?”

Molly expanded on the theme. “Sherlock said that you would have called him a fuck-knuckling prick-turkey.”

It had been strange enough to hear Molly swear the first time. Hearing it again was just as surreal. Greg looked from Molly to Sherlock as though horrified that his beloved had been so altered by corrupting influences.

Sherlock just looked long-suffering. That made Greg laugh, starting with a surprised huff and ending with a spluttering guffaw.

John, merriment in his eyes, looked at Sherlock. “That’s what you think I’d’ve called him?”

In the face of all the laughter, Sherlock’s tension had eased somewhat. John could see that his friend was less likely to dive for a weapon if he overheard a car backfiring. Sherlock’s grey eyes regained a little of their sparkle before he decided his best defence was to be very prim. “I don’t have your propensity for gutter talk, John. I lack those formative years of army training.”

“Don’t blame it all on the army,” John said, “My grandma knew a thing or two about verbally stripping paint. Besides,” he added John thoughtfully, “It sounds to me like he _was_ a fuck-knuckling prick-turkey. Though you might equally have been thinking of ‘jerk-turkey’. Or ‘prick-monkey’.” He delivered the optional vocabulary as though presenting alternative medical diagnoses.

“But we can agree on the fuck-knuckling portion of the epithet?” Sherlock wanted to know.

“I think that’s indisputable,” John agreed.

Sherlock huffed a short breath out, expelling a further measure of tension. Molly was fine. The… _prick-turkey_ (or jerk-turkey or prick-monkey) was out of circulation. Greg would look after Molly, who was after all actually as fine as she attested (and despite appearances was strong and capable and not cowed by the events of the day).

And John was here. John who understood about the Year in Hell, even if he didn’t have all the details. John, who knew, who had faith, that Sherlock was not a bad man, in spite of the bad things he’d done when there had been no other choice. John, who knew what it was to feel that the enemy was breathing down your neck even when that enemy was long gone. John, who had Sherlock’s back, metaphorically for a time, and now, again, at last, literally.

At last, Sherlock began to lose the hunted look. Molly was laughing again, and Greg’s deep voice was teasing her about having been wrong to think she was such a _nice_ girl. Sherlock closed his eyes briefly to take in the normality of it, and opened them to John’s bright blue gaze, comprehending and strong and unshakably _there_.

Sherlock’s mouth twitched up in a smile, which turned into a broader expression at Greg’s accusation that John was a bad influence on pretty much everyone from Tad Anderson to the Queen.

“Oh, I doubt he has much influence over Mycroft,” Sherlock countered.

“Wouldn’t say that,” murmured John as he began to look at a menu, “I could have sworn I heard him humming _Illuminated_ the other day.”

“I’ll be impressed when I hear him call the Minister for Defence a…” Sherlock paused to recall.

“A sly rat-bastard, gutter-fucking turd-meister,” supplied John.

“I believe you also used ‘mewling, dog-bollocksing, sponge-brained twat’.”

“Yeah, that’s the guy,” John concurred.

Molly giggled. “Turd-meister,” she repeated and giggled again.

“You’re a very bad man, Doctor Watson,” Greg told him.

“A very bad man indeed,” John agreed equably, “And I’ll have the carbonara.”

“No,” said Sherlock, leaning back in his chair, fully at ease at last, “You’ll like the arrabiata better. They make it very spicy here.”

“So I will.” John leaned back too, grinning, “ _You’ll_ have the carbonara, though.”

“Yes,” said Sherlock. There were no pressing cases, no need to protect his brain from the energy-sapping ravages of digestion, “I will.”

Molly patted his hand again, and Greg gave him a nod – appreciation again for looking out for Molly. Under the table, John’s left foot pressed momentarily against Sherlock’s ankle. Sherlock wanted to be annoyed, but in the wake of defused, nameless anxiety, couldn’t be bothered.  Greg and John and Molly (and Mrs Hudson at home) were safe. They were safe, they were safe, they were safe. And being here, now, with these gestures and words and laughter, Sherlock felt it too. That he was _safe_.

Well, except for being safe from John’s lightning reflexes when Sherlock tried to steal John’s share of the garlic bread and found the bread out of reach and John darting over to slurp a speared mushroom right off Sherlock’s fork.

“Army-trained,” John said through the mouthful of mushroom before taking a huge bite of bread, “I’m a carbonara ninja.”

“You’re a rat-bastard jerk-turkey,” Sherlock corrected him, before arching an eyebrow at Greg and Molly, who were both laughing. John’s infectious giggle was highlighted by the look of comical triumph in his eyes, as though being called a rat-bastard jerk-turkey was the highest compliment he’d ever received.

Yes, oh, yes. He was safe, and home, and everything was good. It really, actually was.

And Sherlock laughed along with them, and John, that bad good man, grinned at him, and it was all good, and fine, and perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from My Chemical Romance's House of Wolves (which is also the song that provided the title for I Know a Thing About Contrition).


End file.
